Making a Difference in the World

"Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity, can cause to be set in motion....Mend the part of the world that is within your reach." Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I want to take these words to heart. I need to quit looking for the bigger thing to do. I know in my own life that the things that have made the biggest impacts on my life have been the small things; a word said in passing that shook my world, a kind smile that eased my aching heart, a quick touch on the hand that said, "I care about you"....such small things can have a big effect on the heart for good.

Today I want to do small things for my loved ones and strangers alike. I want to live mindfully and deliberately, and by lightening someone else's load, I'll bring more joy into my own life.

Being Ordinary

This quote is from the book The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison. "But as all the identities I worked so hard to construct over the years begin to slough away, I feel myself reconnecting with my own quiet center. It is as if I am, at last, catching a glimpse of myself not as I might wish to be, but as I am. I see a woman who is less ambitious than she once was. Someone less self-conscious, less invested in appearances, but also less "special" than the person I always thought I was meant to be. I see my own ordinariness. And I see that to be ordinary is okay after all."

This is what I'm becoming now in my mid-fifties. I'm not completely accepting the part about being ordinary though. I don't want to be ordinary, but I know that it's an okay place to be, I guess.

New Additions to my Library

These are the books that I bought last week at our local library's 'Friends of the Library' sale. I've been wanting to join this organization for a few years but haven't had the time for anything extra.

One of the perks of membership is being able to come to this sale first before the general public. I stayed about two hours and came home with these stacks. I spent $37.00 for 25+ books. Not a bad deal at all!

Where I'm going to put them I don't know. I think I'll go through my 600+ collection of fiction and weed out what I know I won't ever want to read again and replace those with the new books.

Pat Conroy Country

I'm chasing Pat Conroy again this week. We're on Fripp Island, SC where he lives. In all the times I've been here, I've yet to see him. I've just finished reading his book My Reading Life, and like all his other books, it's sublime. Here's a quote about how he feels when he finishes reading a book. It describes my own feelings perfectly.

"Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward, is part of literature's profligate generosity."

I haven't read all his books...yet. My favorite, so far, has been Beach Music. I won't gush here. I've already done that plenty of times before.